Olympian Activities

The Games of the XXX Olympics are under way and we know this is as big a deal as the Superbowl because of the Roman numerals.

With the cold weather even the Beach Volleyball women are covered up so at best (or worst) these are the Games of the PG Olympiad.

I'll wait until you see how truly funny that is.

Speaking of the Superbowl, I have a theory about how to improve the popularity of international soccer (usually mis-translated into English as "football"): Instead of only one point per Goooooaaaaaalllll! Make each goal worth six points like real football.

Then instead of a horribly boring U.S. victory over the United Arab Emirates, 4-2; it would have been a terribly exciting U.S. victory over the United Arab Emirates, 24-12.

Think about how American male eyeballs would slam shut every Sunday afternoon (and Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights) if American football awarded one point for a touchdown, a half point for a field goal, and a sixth of a point for a kicked extra point or a third of a point for a run or pass extra point.

If the NFL scored the way international "football" is scored, Superbowl XLV (which, if my Roman-Numeral-to-Real-Numeral translator is working properly, was the 1,475th game) then the Packers would have defeated the Steelers 5¹/6 to 4¹/6.

As you might imagine the Twitter-verse was apoplectic over the opening ceremonies. Inasmuch as the Games of the XXX Olympiad are being held in London, England it is not clear to me why American political reporters were so enraged that the opening ceremonies were so British-centric.

One of the biggest screams of agony was over the two and a half hour piece dealing with Britain's National Health Service.

Someone Tweeted that the NHS is the largest single employer on the planet.

Naturally that darned near brought Google to its knees as both Anglophiles and pro-Obamacare Tweeters attempted to disprove such a ridiculous claim.

The claim was wrong, but not ridiculous. It's the fifth largest employer - maybe the fourth largest - on the planet.

According to the BBC, the largest single employer on the planet is the U.S. Department of Defense with 3.2 million employees. The DoD counts both uniformed service members and civilian employees in its census.

Number two is the Chinese military with 2.3 million. However, the Chinese only count uniformed service members so it is likely if we had a number for civilian employees, the Chinese would lead the parade.

Third is Walmart with 2.1 million employees worldwide. Thus, Walmart is the largest civilian employer.